Hi everyone,
Hope you're all enjoying your holidays! A question I've been getting a lot lately is how much extra reading one is required to do in your 1st/2nd/3rd year at university. Now, generally the more extra reading you do, the better but sometimes we don't have enough time to read up on everything covered in the lectures so here's what's generally expected.
1st year: Here you will barely need to do any extra reading and that's because all content that you are required to know and will be examined on will be covered in the lectures. This can be on the lecture slides and includes additional points the lecturer has covered during the lectures/workshops but hasn't put on the slides. Other than that you will not need to know anything above that. Your exams are True/False MCQs and Short Answer Questions (SAQs) so even if you do extra reading, you won't really get a chance to show them that you have (although of course it will help during tricky MCQs which always seem to pop up in every exam). However even here, you will only need to read sections from recommended texts that are relevant to your lecture content. So e.g. if the lectures cover prokaryotic transcription and translation and the book chapters also mention eukaryotic transcription and translational, you will only be tested on the prokaryotic mechanisms because only that was taught during lectures. I'd say refer to the textbook when you don't understand lecture content. Because you are most certainly required to understand all of it completely and thoroughly. And I mean really stare at your slides and pick out the minute fonts as well because even they come up in the exams! I'm gonna commit a crime here and say don't shy from using Wikipedia because it actually really helps you understand basic biology concepts. So there, that's your extra reading, first years. Recommended textbooks or Google search. Whatever helps you grasp the concepts.
2nd year: well now you're in second year and things start to look overwhelmingly complicated. So how much extra reading should you do now? For the MCQs and SAQs, the criteria are the same. You will be tested on stuff that is covered in lectures only. But of course, now lectures have a huge amount of content and yes you will need to wrap your head around all the concepts. That's why you'll need the textbooks here. No research papers or reviews since the content will all be generally available in textbooks. In some modules, some concepts aren't present in textbooks because they are new/controversial and your lecturer will recommend papers you can read. You won't need to go beyond that. At least not for MCQs and SAQs.
Essays are a different story, however. Here's your chance to show your lecturer how much you know. And the more you read, the more you know and the more you can write. However, you will need to keep your essays tied to the main questions and you shouldn't just blab on endlessly nor should you mention everything you have taken the pains to read that is vaguely related to your question because you will be marked down for irrelevant content (check QMplus for mark scheme)
So what resources should you use to read up? I only remember using textbooks, maybe one or two papers (review papers of course because they explain concepts and tie it together like a textbook and at this stage we can't digest primary research articles that easily, plus they don't give you much either) But especially for, say my Human Molecular Biology, Basic Immunology modules (I do biomed), the recommended textbooks were more than sufficient to write detailed essays that got me good marks. We will have a session on essay writing for exams next semester, so more detail on this later. For now, just read your textbook for the essays, Google search/Wikipedia/lectures for MCQs and SAQs :)
3rd year: I'm a third year myself so can't give any advice. Sadly we have no mentors but I've heard we need to do a lot of reading up, review articles (maybe even primary articles who knows), immerse yourself in the content because now we have three essays to write for every exam. I guess I'll find out in June. Yikes!
Best wishes,
Hira
